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Bookworm

Jaimy Gordon: Lord of Misrule

Lord of Misrule (McPherson) Jaimy Gordon is a recently-discovered American novelist with an original voice and vision. Her National Book Award-winning novel, Lord of Misrule, is set at Indian Mound Downs, a rinky-dink racetrack in Wheeling, West Virginia, a place where "scarred and lonely dreamers in the American grain" dream of better luck someday....

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By Michael Silverblatt • Dec 16, 2010 • 29m Listen

Jaimy Gordon

is a recently-discovered American novelist with an original voice and vision. Her National Book Award-winning novel,

Lord of Misrule

(McPherson), is set at Indian Mound Downs, a rinky-dink racetrack in Wheeling, West Virginia, a place where "scarred and lonely dreamers in the American grain" dream of better luck someday. The novel invents a language that is poetic and purely American. Gordon's sense of the charm of the down-and-out life makes us fall in love with a country we've all but given up on.

Read an excerpt from Lord of Misrule.

Jaimy Gordon's book recommendations:

Rot

by Janet Kauffman

Compression Scars by Kellie Wells

The Leper Compound by Paula Nangle

The End by Salvatore Scibona

Hermine: An Animal Life by Maria Beig

Hell by Kathryn Davis

The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf by Kathryn Davis

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    Michael Silverblatt

    host, 'Bookworm'

    CultureBooksArts
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